Said Young: ``It`s simple. If you love your work, you can do almost anything. I`m getting paid to have fun with children I love.``

As a child growing up in rural Montana, there was never any doubt that Young would become a teacher.

``I grew up teaching. I taught my dolls,`` she said. ``I never wanted to do anything else.``

After she finished high school, Young fled Big Sky Country for the Gold Coast.

She graduated in 1941 from Florida State College for Women, now Florida State University in Tallahassee, and got a job with Palm Beach County schools.

It didn`t take her long to form a theory about teaching, whether it was teaching children or adults.

``Each person has a particular talent, and learns in a different way, at a different rate,`` she said, ``so I try to incorporate everything, hoping I`ll hit something, some way, that they can learn with.``

That theory, said her colleagues, works.

``She`s a good teacher, and she`s always been a good teacher,`` Ken Swain, the principal of South Olive, said.

``It`s not just her longevity. It`s her skill,`` he said. ``She`s a resource to the other teachers.``

Young has the wisdom that comes with maturity and the vitality that comes with enthusiasm, Swain said.

``There`s some older ones who are spent and ready to retire, but not Mrs. Young,`` he said. ``She still has energy.``

Young has written several career-education pamphlets, including one on airport-related jobs that Maude illustrated last year.

Recently, it was Young`s work on a proposal to teach energy awareness and conservation that helped the school get a $1,000 grant. The money may be used to buy microscopes.

For years, Young has given each of her students a personal, handwritten note to take home at Thanksgiving.

No matter the age of her students, though, they all remember the strange science projects better than the Thanksgiving notes.

``I remember the working volcano with the chemicals that made lava,`` Bicknell said.

Mike and Maude, not surprisingly, still groan at the mention of term papers.

``I`ll never be able to write it. That`s what I thought at first,`` Mike said. Yet he and Maude said they learned much about the topics they chose. Maude wrote about flowers and Mike about the brain.

``Some parents have said it`s too difficult,`` Young admitted. But the assignment is designed to teach children how to research and write about a specific subject.

``She wasn`t an easy teacher,`` Mike said. ``But when it`s too easy for me, I don`t have enough to do. So I sit and talk, and then I get in trouble.``

More than anything else, Young prepares her students well for junior high school, Bicknell and Vrooman agreed.

With a few teachers, Vrooman said, ``it was awfully easy to get by, but Mrs. Young wouldn`t let you get by. Maude has always felt encouraged in Mrs. Young`s class. She always felt good about herself.``

``She weaned us very well,`` Bicknell said. ``We walked out of her classroom with a solid education.``

It was during Young`s class, Bicknell said, that she decided to become a teacher.

``I model a lot of what I do from her classes,`` Bicknell said.

She recalled the day she arrived at South Olive to teach and walked into a faculty meeting and a roomful of strangers.

It was Young who stood up, walked up to her and hugged her, then began to introduce her.

``When she came back to teach, I was thrilled to death,`` Young said. ``After all, she was one of mine.``

She called Bicknell`s return to South Olive ``one of the best things that ever happened to me.``

The best part of teaching, ``is when children come back and remember me,`` Young added. ``That makes me feel good inside.``